Vaccinomics and adversomics as new trends in vaccinology

Abstract

Currently used vaccines have been developed based on experimental pre-clinical and clinical trials. Although the widespread availability of vaccines is one of the greatest achievements in public health, the selection of antigens capable of inducing an effective immune response has not been successful for some pathogens to date. Searching for and detecting a relationship between genes or whole genome sequences and the level of immunization response has opened the second “golden age” of vaccinology and led to the development of two new branches: vaccinomics and adversomics. Vaccinomics is a combination of pharmacogenetics, which defines the correlation between single gene polymorphism and immunization response and pharmacogenomics, which characterizes the correlation between genome sequence polymorphism, immunogenicity induced by the vaccine. Adversomics is aimed at developing a strategy for reducing the risk of adverse events by diagnosing potentially high-risk individuals and using modified vaccines. The assumptions and achievements of vaccinomics, initiated by Georg Poland, have influenced the development of a new vaccine antigen selection strategy. This strategy consists of selecting the optimal antigen after characterizing the genetic and epigenetic determinants of the immune system components of all candidate vaccine antigens. Taking into account the role of variability, not only in the pathogen but also in the host in antigen, selection strategies may significantly improve the efficiency of the newly developed vaccines and vaccines currently in use after their respective modifications.